Much trauma is caused by unfair uses of power in groups, particularly by moderators of online communities, who often act with unfair bias. This is a place to make such cases known to try to deter them from happening.

The Patients’ Association, certainly its Scottish branch, is ruthless, self-interested, + not interested a damn in the patients in whose name it exists.

When it is approached concerning corrupt warping of the procedures in the NHS complaints and Ombudsman systems,

the Patients’ Association’s chair will just say, sorry can’t help, you have tried all possibilties, nothing we can do. When she knows there is something she can do, she can expose what is going on. This can be done both on the Patients’ Association’s website and in all the representational material it produces at a general level on NHS patients’ behalf. But the PA’s response to being told this, + told it has an AUTOMATIC duty to do it or else is itself criminally culpable towards many people, is just to ignore it.

When an “advance statement” under the 2003 Mental Health Act is presented to the NHS, and contains declared information affecting every other person either presenting such a statement or using mental health systems, the information must be acted on. It is not enought just to file away the advance statement in the personal files of the person who wrote it. Because it is potentially evidence in every mental health case, it is a legal corruption of the case of everyone in the system unless that is done, which makes it an automatic duty. This is a description of the case the PA’s assistance in was applied for. Its reaction is a deliberate siding with suppression of facts. It is a criminal act towards all users of the mental health system.

Everyone thinking of trying the Patients’ Association, for anything, instead tell it you know of this + enquire as to how it explains a claim to be entitled to say no to exposing any, that’s any, corruption in health service procedures !!!

AS means we can’t be expected to guess things, including rules, by instinct, right? Hence we can’t be held accountable to obey any rule without knowing it existed. Autism too.

Which being a biological fact about us, is also a fairer approach to everyone. As a principle, it would be a great advance in democracy. It would abolish all generally-worded rules and discretionary authority.

In public libraries, it means 3 things they have to observe or else they are perpetrating discrimination against us against all the international human rights structures! Because we can’t be distinguished by sight from the NT population, it means they have to apply these things to everyone!!

No library can enforce on any user a rule for which there is no display telling users it exists.

No library can have generally-worded rules that give discretion to staff to make up more specific rules moment to moment, that have no separate existence as specific rules.

No library ever has the power to decide or announce “We don’t approve of…” anything.

All it needs to establish these principles, as binding on every public library throughout the EU, is a single test case where a library breaks them.

This has now been provided, by Dalgety Bay library in Fife, Scotland. After a case there, Bob Izatt, head of Fife libraries, has replied to a notice of these public rights just by a reiteration of the present system, making no reference to AS at all. He simply stated that libraries have generally-worded rules and staff discretion, and claimed staff are trained to exercise it consistently. Which achieves not a shred towards library users knowing what to expect.

He is illegally blatantly testing his chances of pretending AS doesn’t exist. This in a county that for a while has been operating a “Roving Autism Resource Library” in partnership with a local group. His bad example can be cited by name all over the EU, and in any other country where human rights challenges are possible, as proof of systematic violations of minorities unless the opposite of what he wants happens, the 3 rights listed become recognised as applying to all users in all libraries.

Maurice Frank
9 Sep 2006

Sep 28: An attempt to rejoin Fife libraries on these terms as a precedent, and to ensure they stick, initially by means of circulating a notice of the precedent to the staff of a string of Fife libraries at once, is being made. Awaiting its results, good or bad.

Oct 19: The result is, predicatably, not satisfactory to the extent of actually getting further acknowledgement of the precedent out of Fife libraries, in response to said circulation. Take everything written before Sep 28 as standing, except only that Fife libraries require further challenge to actually acknowledge on explict record that they won’t break the precedent, that has been attained still only in theory.

Still not answered by Save The Children since Jun 29.

Maurice Frank
15 Jul 2006

Glad you sent me your latest supporter’s mag. …

On page 4 there was an upsetting item about the child author Libby Rees becoming a backer for you. In publicising any child author, there is an act of mass child cruelty done unless a fact about child authors is AUTOMATICALLY referred to. You may well not have known the item, as it is unjustly little publicised, but you will know it now – see [linked to page then existing on Phad‘s site] – and this needs updating urgently in your next literature. The item is, that there exist wronged child authors, whose chance to complete books was ruined by adult abuses towards us. I’m one, and my case represents a whole missing generation of child authors after Lindsay Brown in 1978. I was covered as a child author with a sci-fi/relativity novel in progress, by 2 Welsh newspapers in 1980-2 when they were reporting on early O-level passes at my school. The first item was by the young Rod Liddle. But my chance to complete it and succeed like Libby was ruined by abusive school homework pressure, which would eventually reach breaking point and a crisis situation. The school, deservedly now closed, had the abusive stupidity to benefit from the public mention of my writing but then not give me enough spare time in my life to do it! and teachers believe they know best and give orders, they don’t allow the child to decide.

This is a crime of child ill-treatment and a deep wound. Given child authorship’s now apparent association with Asperger Syndrome, not saying they all have it, it’s even a medical wrong. As recently as the launch of an Asperger needs-survey project in Manchester 2 months ago, Aspect Action, I discovered a case of this school pressure happening to a child author RIGHT NOW.

Don’t you think wronged authorship is experienced worldwide by exactly the children wronged by poverty or wars who your work is full of? The crime upon all of us is worsened every time publicity of a child who WAS allowed to succeed does not mention wronged authors’ existence. So you urgently need to mention it in follow-up to your Libby item and in all the work you intend to do with her.

ETHICALLY towards children, you must not take an institutionally cynical position of wanting to prove for the sake of it that there is a discretionary choice over this. I have campaigning openings, as mentioned, to spead the word about that if it happens.

You would agree is right to put to anyone, simple obligations against child ill-treatment. Hence, you must not feel insulted to be told that the responsibility to publicise wronged child authors is UTTERLY AUTOMATIC. It is demonstrated truth to say on public record that any party who wants any discretionary choice over this to exist even in theory, or who changes the word “automatic” to any other word a shred less committal, commits culpable and potentially actionable child cruelty thereby.

You have not committed that because you likely didn’t know of the issue, and now you can do the right thing for a group of child victims.

Circulated at the request of David Cunningham, a frustrated parent in Scotland and Cross-Party Group member – site.

Attached is yet another of the hundreds of examples of the typical blocks and strategies being implemented by HMIe and Scottish Executive in preventing the parents of Scotland getting quality Education for their Special Need Children. This and the hundreds of other examples proves that there is systemic incompetence and cover up by the Scottish Executive and other bodies who are destroying Special Need Children and their families by colluding to protect themselves against basic challenge and questioning.

The MSP’s of Scotland have to see this as yet more evidence of the Council’s and other public bodies covering their tracks by implementing a Policy of zero disclosure. Problem is the Parents of Scotland are being told by their MSP’s that the Parliament is useless to prevent them doing what they want. I have examples from all over Scotland that prove that the Executive and Council’s are a law unto themselves and that they see the Parliament and it’s MSP’s as nothing more than an irritant to their separate decision making. I will leave the other parents/relatives/friends of Scotland to present their own points but present the following 3 factual examples that demonstrate the case that Parliament is being ignored and is a toothless talking shop:

1. HMIe carry out a secret, incompetently executed review on my son and then refuse to provide any terms of reference, don’t interview the parents, don’t interview the teachers and carer’s and mainly interview senior managers and budget holders. HMIe then refuse to issue the secret report to the parents while all the other government bodies and council has been provided with a copy of the report;

2.Marilyn Livingstone in response to my question as to why my Labour MSP wasn’t issuing letters and questions of her own to Fife Education stated …MSP’s are just really just Facilitators I really don’t know what you expect us (MSP’s) to do?

3. Murdo Fraser my hard working and caring MSP has said Dave, I really don’t know how long I can keep on requesting answers and information. There are clearly many issues and they don’t want to disclose them to me. I have even tried to use the Freedom of Information Act and well you can see what that’s achieved. Due to the time that your case is taking I am not sure that I will be able to keep devoting time to David’s case. There’s not much more that I can do. What follows are now my words. Murdo has been ignored and as a caring MSP has been treated despicably by the Public Bodies. His numerous brave attempts for disclosure has achieved absolutely nothing but an increased collusion between HMIe, Scottish Executive and Fife Council.

A serious question must now be asked.

The Scottish Parliament under Labour are allowing an incompetent Executive and Council to spent the Tax Payers Money doing what they want, when they want. However worse of all The Parliament are Powerless to act against them. In addition MSP’s who do try and get answers are branded as troublemakers. But worse of all the Executive and Councils string them along to the point that the MSP is forced and systematically pressured to give up on the children and families that they represent. The blame for this has to be put at the door of the Labour Party.

Scotland where the Scottish Executive and Councils laugh, scorn and ignore the People of Scotland.

The people of Scotland now know where the real power lives and it isn’t in the Parliament. I am distributing this e-mail all over Scotland and the World, I suggest you do as well.

Dave Cunningham Parent of a typical disabled and sick child who has had services, budgets and justice stripped away by the Labour Party, Scottish Executive and Councils.
27 May 2006

An 8-year-old manic writer in Seattle, US, Adora Svitak, has emerged as the focus of an international campaign whose like has no precedent, to promote child authorship. It all looks very slickly managed in the typical style of US business PR.

That will be fine as long as it shows responsiveness to ordinary personal justice. That is now being sought:

Here is a copy of a message sent on Feb 23 through the www.adorasvitak.com website’s [now disappeared] interactive page. (Under “Ask Adora” then “Schools & Libraries”.) Also copied to Charles Faulkner, of Aultbea Publishing who published Libby Rees, and Viv Bird, director of Reading Is Fundamental a literacy trust in the US. Both had spoken in the Observer Feb 19 in support of an imminently projected British tour by Adora Svitak. Both carry the same responsibility as her own publicity machine does, to be moral, which means: to make thisthe

great opening for forcing mass public awareness of the

wronged
child authors,
rather than to be just something “professional” and remote.
The move made towards them was conciliatory and it was put on this site assuming the best about them. Now that there is nothing obtained from them over a significant time, they must begin to be considered disturbing.

Copy

I find it extraordinary that you actually have a section inviting schools to seek advice on encouraging child authorship.

A whole stolen generation of child authors have had the rest of our lives deeply wounded and abused, by schools. By homework pressure destroying our chance to be child authors. Not leaving us enough spare time to finish books.

As soon as any parties publicising a child author know about this obscene crime, it becomes a CITABLE AUTOMATIC duty to child protection for you to publicise the fact that wronged child authors exist. You just have to mention it alongside your publicising of your luckier child author. It becomes an act of cruelty to other children not to do that.

The stolen generation period is 1978-2001. My luck that it was exactly the last child author to emerge before the stolen generation, Lindsay Brown, who inspired me to be one. Because the gifted children movement got a local newspaper fuss made of me for other reasons and my child authorship mentioned along with it while the book was still incomplete, in 1980, before abuse at school ruined its completion, I am historical evidence of the stolen generation. I can serve on behalf of recognition rights for them all. Have you thought of the ones whose countries just weren’t democracies when they were children: I can be the stepping stone for their recognition too.

I have Asperger Syndrome, which is associated with a mind focused towards writing: thus Luke Jackson and Kenneth Hall. [Links to the Phad article and the Scottish parliament autism Cross-Party Group minutes for 27 Nov 2003 and 2 Feb 2005.]

Do you have any contacts in Britain who would like to support my placard protest, on March 8, 6:45 pm, outside the Strathclyde Hilton Hotel at Bellshill near Glasgow, while Luke Jackson’s mother Jacqui is speaking inside? The protest is not against her, it does not prejudge her at all, it is against the organisers of her speaking tours (Centre For Development of Autism Practice) ignoring this issue. Wronged child authors should be mentioned by the Jackson family every time.

Not being in America, I have discovered you from a blog comment made in response to the recent case of Libby Rees here. It seems obvious that since 2001, and thanks at first to writings about health conditions, there has been a massive breakthrough for the idea of child authorship and it has suddenly become fashionable to an intensity never known before. This after hardly existing at all for over 20 years. I seek your concerned action on speaking out about wronged child authors and giving our fight for recognition a loud place in this bandwagon.

The Education Additional Support For Learning Act

(in Scotland) 2004, coming into effect Nov 2005, creates an entitlement for children passing through decisions on educational needs, to have their own views taken and consulted with. The expanded variety of needs that have come into recognition since the last act in 1980, and the harmful experiences of authoritarian education that preceded their recognition, compelled MSPs to accept this reform.

It means the children and parents, in order to express their views, are entitled for all experiential evidence on past failiures of school practice and their results, to be publicly known, or else they would suffer disability discrimination. There follows an automatic right to publish these things.

and meanwhile

“special needs education” is a label that some have always found objectionable, because it covers children of normal intelligence with social adjusting troubles and simultaneously covers learning disability. This kind of uncomfortable feeling lay behind the swing, around 1980, to seeking integration into ordinary schools, of children with behavioural or other coping problems, or curricular difficulties. the government report recommending this move was made under the chairmanship of Mary Warnock.

Now (still around in the Lords), she has said the application of this ideal has become too ideological and applied rigidly without thinking whether it fits each case. She hasn’t said the ideal was always misguided, but she has had a change of heart over it based on its results. On radio 4 “The Westminster Hour” Oct 2, she has called it cruelty to send a child with Asperger Syndrome to a large secondary school. It’s an incompatible environment to cope with.

Now that has been said, the effects of the cruelty on its past subjects has a claim to be dealt with in any way that they indicate affects their present lives. It also affects the sum of knowledge available for applying to present children. All politicians need to give their positions on how this shall be organised and the information centrally pooled for reference. the likes of Children In Scotland need to push them to.